Isolation
by Nova-chan
Summary: For a request over at Sherlockbbc...Sherlock in a sensory deprivation tank.
1. Chapter 1

The thing that got his attention was that there was nothing to get his attention.

Sherlock gave a full body twitch as he became conscious. No sound had woken him, no odor or flicker of light had seeped into his psyche to alert him to his situation.

He had heard people talking about their "worst fears" before. When they were younger, Mycroft had been terrified of spiders. Sherlock had taken advantage of this fear and collected little arachnids everywhere he went so he could place them in Mycroft's clean laundry, or under his bookcase. That had been a valuable lesson for Sherlock in exposure therapy. When Mycroft was fifteen, he had walked straight up to Sherlock holding a little brown _Tegenaria duellica _in his hand. The next day, Mycroft had awoken with a start to find a garden snake in his bed.

It seemed that most people had a great fear, sometimes even a phobia. Lestrade was afraid of stepping on sewer grates. Anderson couldn't stand lizards. John didn't like small spaces.

But this-being devoid of sensory input with nothing to divert his mind from its constant churning-was Sherlock's worst fear.

He tried to take deep, slow, relaxed breaths, as he felt himself huffing short gasps through his nose. _Categorize the stimuli_, he told himself. _Find a way out._

He was blindfolded, pointlessly since beyond the cloth there was still more darkness. It was definitely an isolation tank, then. It was like being suspended in watery gelatin. The water wasn't cold; pity, it would have been a welcome distraction. His ears were plugged up by some type of foam or spongy material. Sherlock kicked his foot out to make an experimental splashing noise and was more than a little disturbed that he couldn't hear anything but a low rumble from the tank's motor.

His arms were fastened into metal bracelets attached to a belt around his waist. He made a trial pull at the restraints on his wrists, but the belt didn't give any slack. Other than the belt, he was naked, only warm, sluggish water surrounding his form.

By far the most intrusive part of the confinement was the strip of cloth tied around his mouth. Sherlock could taste the saltiness of the water that had seeped into the gag, expanding it to fill his mouth. He pressed at the cloth with his tongue, concerned that a corner of the fabric was tickling at the back of his throat. The cloth shifted slightly, but couldn't be removed entirely.

Sherlock could feel his foot jerking in agitation. This was overwhelming at the same time as it was not enough of a stimulus. He squeezed his fists and released them repeatedly. A slight wave of nausea was a welcome distraction. But, it was fleeting and soon he was left in Purgatory, an abyss of existence.

He realized that he had no idea how he'd gotten into the tank, or who had stripped and bound him. He searched the last spotted memories he had but nothing was discernible.

Sherlock decided to attempt to push the lid of the tank open. He raised his feet into the space between the water and the wall of the tank and touched the smooth surface. He pushed, but nothing happened. He pushed harder but only managed to dunk the top half of his body underneath the water. He almost couldn't right himself and when he did, sputtering and shaking, he decided not to try pushing on the lid anymore.

Sometimes he was drifting. Sometimes he was in a lofty awareness. Sometimes he was unsure what he was doing. His skin itched. No, his skin positively _crawled_. He couldn't even hear himself breathing and the only smell in the tank was the vaguely acidic odor of the Epsom salts.

Time passed in enigmatic increments. And Sherlock's mind had nothing to distract him from the looming shadows that he didn't want to face. He tried focusing on the person or persons responsible for his current treatment. Moriarty? Hasn't piped up in months. Garden variety criminal of London? Too idiotic to pull off something this…devious. Mycroft? Hopefully knew better than to do this to his own brother, knowing what a terrifying ordeal it would be. There was no direction to take the problem. He hadn't any avenues to entertain.

Sherlock sucked in a shuddery breath through his nose and shoved the thoughts away. But they only came back at him more intensely. _Freak. Psychopath. Not clever enough. Not good enough. You've let me down again, Sherlock. Outcast. Loner. Monster. Heartless. You're a failure. You'll never make anything of your life. You're insignificant._

He tried to sleep. The churning thoughts kept hammering away with him, depriving him of an escape.

Finally, something managed to distract him. He thought he saw a flash of light go off somewhere in his peripheral vision. He opened his eyes and stared through the blindfold, struggling to see, trying to figure out if the tank had been opened. Then he saw a face flickering before him, stark white against the blackness that filled his vision. He might have groaned, too difficult to tell. He shuddered and closed his eyes back, trying to make the image go away. _It's a hallucination. You expected this. It's fine._

It wasn't fine. Colors and faces streamed across his brain, forcing themselves into his visual mind. Sounds were suddenly breaking through the barrier of the plugs. Horrible screeching sounds and low murmurs and gruesome screams. Sherlock stilled himself, even as he could feel his body trembling in the water. He tried to shut it out. He wished for his churning thoughts again. Anything was better than suffering from the hallucinations.

Then without warning, the faces were familiar. April, the dead six year old he'd been too late to find. The taxi driver, with his throaty laugh and sinister eyes. Mycroft, his expression unreadable, confronting him about his drug use. John, looking disappointed when Sherlock was unable, yet again, to connect to him or anyone else emotionally. All he could hear was the deafening sound of explosions and gunfire. His skin was being pricked all over with needles, his eyes were burning and his throat was closing.

Something grabbed him by the arm and he fought against it, even though he was aware that it wasn't real. The grip loosened and Sherlock plunged backwards under the water, sucking salty liquid in through his nose. He sputtered when he resurfaced, shaking his head to drive the water out of his sinuses.

Then, if he could be pardoned for the colloquialism, there was light. Shapes and objects were visible again. He could see tendrils of his hands that had swept over his face. He could see the ceiling some 50 metres above. The lid of the isolation tank was pushed back, quelling the claustrophobia and nightmarish visions.

The gag was removed from his mouth and Sherlock took the first decent breath he had in what felt like a very long time. Now two sets of arms were pulling him straight up and out of the unbearable tank. The restraints and belt were removed. He was settled onto the floor on a towel and given a cotton robe to wrap around himself. It was a few minutes before he realized that John was sitting right in front of him and talking. Wide-eyed and alarmed.

It took a few more moments before he figured out why he couldn't hear what John was saying. He pinched the ends of the ear plugs and pulled them out, dropping them carefully onto the towel.

" 'lo…" he said by way of greeting.

John sighed. "Thank God you're all right. We were beginning to think you'd been in there too long." He was rubbing the sleeves of the robe against Sherlock's arm.

"I'm not cold," Sherlock said. "And I _was _in there too long."

"Eighteen hours," John confirmed.

Sherlock's eyes widened slightly and then he regained himself. "Is that all?"

"You've got Mycroft to thank," John added. "We never would have found you otherwise."

"Where…are we?" Sherlock asked, looking around for the first time. It looked like a spa.

"Sweden," John answered. When Sherlock raised his eyebrows, he said, "Yeah."

"Well, it's about time we went back to London," Sherlock said flatly, attempting to hop to his feet. John steadied him. Then Sherlock noticed Lestrade and several generic police officers standing around and staring. "How long was I missing?" he asked.

"Four days," John said, his breath shaky. "It was a nightmare."

Sherlock scoffed at that but didn't say anything. Then, to John's great surprise, he ducked and let out a little yelp. John put an arm around his shoulders and supported him. "What is it?"

Sherlock swallowed a thickness in his throat. He shook his head. "Holy God…" he mused. "I'm still hallucinating."

"Temporary," John assured him. "Take it easy."

"All the respect I have for your profession notwithstanding, John, I do not intend to 'take it easy' ever again."


	2. Chapter 2

Sherlock couldn't manage to get his feet under him, so John and a faceless officer carried him like a cumbersome box. He actually didn't mind. John was very careful and gentle lifting him under the shoulders and the other man had a light grip on his legs.

The journey to the car John said was waiting took far too long. In fact, the building they were in had abnormally long and narrow hallways.

THUMP

Sherlock jumped at the unexpected sound. "What was that?" he asked.

John didn't respond.

Sherlock tried to take deeper breaths, knowing that the hallucinations were still going to occur, but less and less like the ripples in a pond. He wanted nothing more than to be outside in open space with fresh air, sounds, sights, smells, everything.

THUMP

The robe was wet. Sherlock swallowed compulsively. The robe should have been a little damp from drying him off, but it was sopping with water. He shivered in apprehension.

"John?"

THUMP

John dropped him. Sherlock's arms had gotten tangled in the sleeves of the robe and he couldn't reach out to catch himself before he slammed into the ground. Only he didn't slam into the ground. He stayed up in the air, suspended like in some kind of…

THUMP THUMP

…watery gelatin. The world flickered out of existence and everything was dark once more. All the restraints from before were back in place and he was naked again, sightless and powerless in the isolation tank. That had been a particularly vivid hallucination.

Sherlock felt new moisture running down his cheeks. He told himself it was from bobbing his head back into the water when he "fell" in the hallucination.

He was fine.


	3. Chapter 3

He felt the peculiar sensation of oil dripping down the back of his throat. He cold taste the thick, bitter canola oil on the front of his tongue. It was vile, too rich and unwanted. It was starting to choke him. Sherlock turned his face into the water slightly so that he could swallow back some of it to get rid of the oily substance.

"Oof," he grunted as someone flipped him onto his stomach. Sherlock blinked at the agitating light suddenly facing him. The bonds were removed. Had he just lost another gap of time?

"Sherlock, I said are you all right?" It was Mycroft.

"What the hell are you doing here?" Sherlock said. He could still taste the oil, sticking to his teeth and hanging in his throat.

"Rescuing you, little brother," Mycroft said smugly as he looked down at Sherlock. "Good thing I planted a tracking device in your brain."

"You did what?" Sherlock demanded, feeling his head experimentally.

"Remember when you had that 'physical' last year?"

Sherlock nodded, recalling the strange doctor and his perky assistant.

"Didn't you think it odd that you fainted from giving a sample of blood?" Mycroft wondered, cryptically.

"Well, yes…"

"Anyway, why don't you come on with me and I'll take you home," Mycroft offered. He stood and reached out a hand for Sherlock's.

Sherlock sneered. "I'll take a cab if it's all the same to you."

Mycroft frowned down at him. He sighed. "One day, Sherlock, you will be grateful to me for all that I do for you."

Sherlock jolted awake. He looked around at the not-quite darkness of his bedroom.

"It's all right, Sherlock, you're just dreaming again…" John said, not quite awake.

Sherlock rolled over to face John. "A…a dream?" he said quietly.

John's eyelids fluttered and he sat halfway up. "You've had nightmares every night since we got you out of the sensory deprivation tank," he explained, as though he had reminded Sherlock of this many times. "But it's all right. You're safe now."

Sherlock would have balked at that if he hadn't been so unsure. He decided to take a walk to assure himself that his current sense of the world was all real. "I'm just going to pop out for a bit," he said to John, as he slowly sat up. For some reason a lingering feeling of dizziness made the action difficult.

Suddenly, John was on top of him, pushing him back down. "You can't!" John cried.

"What?" Sherlock demanded. "What are you doing?"

"You can't go! You'll drown!"

Sherlock tried to pull away from John, tried to get his arms out of John's tight grasp. He jerked away and got a lungful of water.

Blackness unyielding. Confinement and terror. Had he just been dreaming or hallucinating or a combination of the two? _Focus on something, _he told himself. _The Moretti case. Identical necklaces. One was a fake. Identified by the very modern clasp it had been fitted with. Moretti's sister. Hiding somewhere in eastern Europe with the father's inheritance. Forged Moretti's name on life insurance papers. _

Sherlock slipped backwards into a pool of water. None of that had been real either. He kicked angrily in the tank, bruising his legs against the side walls. He let out a frustrated shout and then worked his jaw, experimentally. He had managed to loosen the cloth over his mouth enough that it was removable. He rubbed his cheek against his shoulder a few times and successfully got rid of the most hated constraint. He then rinsed his mouth with some salty water. The small victory was greatly appreciated.


	4. Chapter 4

Floating. Floating down a river. Luckily, he had gotten stuck in a little pool off to the side while all the other bodies passed by him and perished in the rough waves. There. A body drifting along. Dead from a blunt trauma to the skull. Soon it would disintegrate. But not Sherlock.

Sherlock was fine.

/

John was a bundle of frayed nerves. A bundle of frayed nerves that could maneuver through a jumble of storage lockers _pretty damn well_. He had long since lost Mycroft in the dust. Once Mycroft's people could tell them in which locker Sherlock was being held, John had bolted. It had been about 80 hours since Sherlock had gone missing. John had not been a very patient or likable man in that time.

/

"It has to be the sister! Look at all the resources she has! She's forged papers and we know she isn't above abduction or murder for that matter. Without Sherlock, we'll never be able to find her before she can get all her ducks in a row and flee the continent! And she knows that," John had been talking to Mycroft. Lisa Moretti had been Sherlock's latest client. Her sister had forged her name onto their father's life insurance policy and taken all the money and the family inheritance for herself. Sherlock had been talking about identical necklaces for days and had determined that Fira Moretti was getting ready to extricate herself to some untraceable location. It had only taken 4 hours for John to realize something was wrong. Sherlock never left his phone behind on a case.

It had taken John only 12 hours to convince Mycroft to fly with him to Switzerland. It would have taken less time, but Mycroft required confirmation from his "people" that they were following the right lead.

/

It was a little strange and anticlimactic when John kicked the storage door open to reveal a futuristic egg-shaped tank. At least, that's what he thought it looked like.

Mycroft had caught up in the amount of time John stood staring in the doorway.

"We should check inside the-"

"Yes, I know," John snapped. Two hours on a small private plane and four hours in an even smaller car with Mycroft had severed any politeness or respect John had for the elder Holmes. The all-encompassing worry he was dealing with wasn't too helpful either.

John crossed to the tank and carefully unlatched the cover. He half-expected steam to leak out as he opened the lid.

He more than half-expected to find Sherlock dead inside the small tank. But he wasn't.


	5. Chapter 5

Two sets of arms were pulling him out of the tank again. Stupid. Dull. Couldn't his mind think of anything more creative than the same scenario over and over? He looked up to see who it could be this time. John _and_ Mycroft, he realized, were working in tandem to unfasten him from the belt and cover his modesty. John noticed the earplugs and pulled them out carefully.

"Sherlock, are you okay?" John asked, breathless from adrenaline and worry.

Sherlock nodded. May as well play along with the hallucination. Maybe he could deduce something about the state of his mind from the way his imagination interacted with him.

Mycroft looked down on him smugly. "Perhaps you will stop taking these silly little cases and come work for me. At least I can provide you with some measure of safety."

Sherlock glared at Mycroft and his superior attitude. Then he sat up and punched him in the face.

His fist didn't connect with Mycroft's solid cheekbone. Instead, his shoulder connected with something wet and slimy. Sounds were muted again. He was shivering and laying in icy water from the waist down. A few trials with his sluggish body confirmed that he was only half-naked now, wearing a pair of thin trousers. He feet were now bound together, and his arms were fastened behind his back. The blindfold was still in place, as were the earplugs, and the gag was back. A cold wind ran over his uncovered chest, which was still damp with the freezing water.

Another hallucination, and a damn inconvenient one.

/

Sherlock wasn't lying dead inside the tank. In fact, he wasn't inside the tank at all.

John looked back at Mycroft with a frown. "Your surveillance guys said he would be here!"

Mycroft was typing something into his phone with Sherlockian efficiency. "Then, he was here a very short time ago. Unfortunately, someone else knew we were coming and decided to have him moved."

"That's just great!" John shouted. "If you hadn't been so long getting your arse moving on this case, we could've been home resting right now! All three of us!"

Mycroft raised an eyebrow but didn't take his attention away from his mobile. "Remember, John, you do need me to help you on this. You should really watch that tone."

John blinked. "Are you holding this over my head? He is _your _brother, you know. Does that mean nothing to you?"

"Of course it does," Mycroft replied, placing the phone back into his pocket. "But, it isn't a time-sensitive situation at this point. I could stall a bit if I were so inclined."

Mycroft's expression conveyed his boredom with the situation. John didn't know what to say to that, except, "Where to now?"

/

Marill (two hours ago): Hello, lil plot bunny, you are so cute…Imma name you Bea and gives you little pettings and carrots and hugs…AAIIGHH! (is eaten)


	6. Chapter 6

Ouch. So cold. Unfairly cold. Move away from the cold. Cold is dangerous. And it is painful.

Wandering…

Rolling up onto a shoulder to twist away from the cold biting at his legs. Chausson's Symphony in B-Flat Minor, Op. 20 plays in his mind from beginning to end. It takes that length of time before he can move again, paralyzed by the pain, the cold, the exhaustion, the deadness of this alien world.

Ouch.

Ouch.

Leg hurts. Left leg. Abrasions? Bruises? Fractures? No way to distinguish what kind of pain or what degree of it he's feeling. Arms hurt from strain. That is more evident because they haven't been frozen into a block of ice for 6 weeks like his legs. They're just pinned underneath him and his own weight and the state of his contortion is the cause of the pain.

More symphonies. Instant replay. Occasionally, there will be nothing but the silence and that is when he wanders.

Relieve the pain. Twist away from the cold, twist onto the stomach. He's just rolling on the floor or the ground or the air for hours and days, trying to roll over. Finally he does, or it just seems that way because his face is pressed against something solid and the wind is biting at his back now.

Ouch. Something scrapes away at his face. Unpleasant. A pinprick nuisance.

Dishes are piling up. He's been away from the flat for 18 weeks. The laundry and the dishes are piling up. Or perhaps John took care of them.

_John…_

Why hasn't John found him? Maybe he stopped looking. It's been a while. Maybe he was never looking. Maybe Mycroft was looking. Maybe not. He doesn't care. Sherlock doesn't care.

He's just wandering.

Mycroft hung up his mobile and went back to the spot where John was pacing and staring at the isolation tank. "They can't have gotten very far," was Mycroft's opening line.

John stared at him. "You've been on your phone for fifteen minutes and that's all you and your spies can come up with? Whoever 'they' are, they've had the chance to get a lot farther away since you've been talking!"

Mycroft looked down at John over the bridge of his nose. "I've just put a halt on all aircraft travel in the country. What have you been doing? Testing the limits of your blood pressure?"

"You…stopped all the flights in Switzerland?" John repeated.

"Happens all the time. Sometimes I do it just because I can…"

"What? Really?"

"No. Not really."

"So, then-" John began.

"Well, we at least have the guarantee that they won't be fleeing the country with my brother. We're too far inland for them to make an escape by sea before we could catch up to them."

"So what do we need to do? How do we find them?" John asked. He needed to move, needed to do something proactive. Who knew what the state of Sherlock would be after spending all that time in a sensory deprivation chamber? He could be mad. He could be a vegetable!

Mycroft's phone chirped. He checked it. John stared at him for several minutes, as Mycroft kept his gaze focused on the phone screen, clicking every so often to revive the screen. He seemed to be reading the message repeatedly, his expression never giving anything away. Finally, he spoke. "They've found…his clothing."


	7. Chapter 7

John was hung on Mycroft's words. _They found his clothes. That's not good. Definitely not good. _"Where did they find them?" John dared to ask.

Mycroft took a deep breath through his nose and exhaled noisily. "In a river," he answered.

John stopped breathing for a minute. He couldn't process what Mycroft was trying to say. They had just found clothing, right? Clothing does not equal a body. He could be fine. _He is fine. _"Anything else?" John asked, trying to keep a steady timbre.

"I'm afraid not," Mycroft replied. "They haven't stopped looking…but, as you know, the reason they haven't found _him _yet is likely because-"

"All right, yeah, shut up, Mycroft," John snapped. "Where's this river? I'm going to help look for him."

/

He hated decomposing. But that's what he was doing, wasn't it? The water was eroding him. The dirt was consuming him. The cold was devouring him. _Him. _Sherlock supposed, in a theoretical sense that he had been decomposing since he had reached adulthood. Still, it was unpleasant.

At least the faces weren't bothering him as much. And the voices had taken quite a long break.

Somehow, he knew that that was a bad thing. The worst part was that because of the exposure to the cold, his last viable sense was bleeding away from him. His sense of touch was replaced with a tingling numbness.

Sherlock was definitely not fine.

/

John had been searching with Mycroft's business suited team for hours. Mycroft himself couldn't be found among them, preferring to stay inside in his efforts to aid them. John could imagine him sitting inside his luxury car, sipping cocoa and clicking inanely on his mobile. It would have made him sick if he weren't already sick with worry.

John struck out on his own to search the riverbanks. He couldn't bear to listen as the men and women milling about began to discuss the availability of dredging equipment and the likelihood that they would find "the body" at all.

"The body," one man had called Sherlock. John had to leave.

John continued walking in a hazy sort of awareness. His feet seemed to know how to maneuver him around rocks and tree roots, so his mind drifted elsewhere. He called Sherlock's name a few times, desperately, hopelessly. His voice stuttered over the word. How could this be happening? Why was he searching for Sherlock's body? Just because some bitch was trying to make off with a few hundred thousand pounds? Was Sherlock worth so little to her that she would just throw him out, just dump him into a river so she could get away with defrauding her sister? Was Sherlock worth so little to his own brother that Mycroft was sitting cozy in his car, engine running, while a dozen people were searching for Sherlock's corpse in the frigid river?

John wasn't going to give up. Not until he could place his hands on Sherlock's neck and fail to detect a pulse. Not until an ambulance had been called and a heartbeat couldn't be found with their equipment. Not until all the paramedics' efforts to bring him back had failed.

John felt suddenly very alone. Then he looked up and saw a movement about ten metres away.

"Oh my god…Sherlock?"


	8. Chapter 8

The world was suddenly too loud, too bright, too tangible. It rolled him forward out of the small comfort he'd found from lying perfectly still and thrust him into the biting cold wind once more. Jilted sounds assaulted him. Too close, too far away, never comprehensible. There were too many colors, too many shapes and not enough darkness. His eyes burned and tears streaked down his face without his permission.

Old aches he had forgotten resurfaced. His leg again. Sharp and burning. Sickly hot and stabbing like it had been pierced with a hot needle. His jaw was stiff and it was unbearably painful when he unintentionally moved it.

Hands were touching his face, his neck. Hands and arms rolled him over as a variety of strange noises filtered in and out of his consciousness.

Something soft was placed under his face, and he no longer had the irritating scratches from the brambles or the spines which had been prodding at his cheek before.

Cold air bit at his chafed wrists. His biceps were suddenly tight with pain as they were forced to move after a long immobility.

He must have screamed in pain because his throat was suddenly tight and he was out of breath. Someone had touched and prodded at the agony in his leg.

"Wakey wakey," said a voice. Familiar, cruel, irritating.

Something warm was put across his chest. A heavy jacket? Felt like wool.

"Open your eyes, please, sweetheart," said that voice again. _Don't want to wake up. Don't want to wake up for you, _Sherlock said in his thoughts. He couldn't make his voice comply with him quite yet, other than to make a few primitive grunts and hisses.

Someone slapped his cheek, lightly. He scrunched up his eyes and groaned, trying to push the person off him with his vaguely obedient limbs.

The person was persistent. Something cold touched his neck. Eventually, Sherlock forced his eyes to open out of curiosity and annoyance. "I'm so glad that you're okay," said a falsely-sympathetic voice.

Moriarty grinned down at him, holding a gun under Sherlock's chin.

/

John nearly tripped over a big rock in his scramble to get to the prone man's side. _That would be great, wouldn't it, John? Find Sherlock and then give yourself a concussion?_ he thought. He may have even said parts of it out loud. He was so removed from the processes and functions of his body that he didn't even realize that he was saying Sherlock's name over and over until he knelt beside the man and he put his hands on a pulse.

One horrific outcome avoided, John began to take in the state of his friend. Sherlock was half-naked, blindfolded and gagged, arms secured behind him, legs…

"Oh my god," John whispered. He had to blink several times to understand what he was seeing. Finally, in a detached, medical part of his mind, what he was seeing made sense. There was a foreign object piercing through the calf of the victim's left leg. It was a broken stick, puncturing through the gastrocnemius laterally.

The other part of John's brain kept demanding _How the hell did that happen? _John untied the rope around his friend's ankles and moved Sherlock's leg slightly to appraise the damage. He noted that Sherlock's trouser leg was wet and chilled. John peered at the surging river nearby, and realized that very recently, Sherlock had been _in it. _Somehow, between the force of the water and struggling to keep his head above it, the stick must have jammed itself through Sherlock's leg.

John took a deep, slow breath. He gently lifted Sherlock's head and pulled away the cloths that had kept him sightless and speechless. He noticed the earplugs and discarded them as well. Before laying his friend's head back on the muddy ground, John folded up his scarf and placed it underneath the side of Sherlock's face. Sherlock moaned quietly as John used his pocket knife to cut through the ropes tying his wrists. John placed Sherlock's arms on either side of him, hoping that it would relieve some of the strain.

Another deep breath. John settled himself at Sherlock's legs. He tried to assess whether it would be best for him to take the stick out himself, or wait for help to arrive.

Speaking of help, perhaps he should actually call for it. John swiftly shot off a text to Mycroft, knowing that the cavalry would come to his aid in no time.

John pulled back a tattered edge of Sherlock's trousers to look for early signs of infection. The closer he looked, the more concerned he became, noticing how deep the wound was, and how much blood was trickling out around the edges. John finally tore off the bottom of one of Sherlock's trouser legs and used it to apply pressure around the edges of the wound.

Sherlock screamed. John kept the pressure on, regardless. Sherlock's voice stilled, but he shivered, his teeth chattering as hitching moans slipped from his throat. John tied a knot in the fabric at Sherlock's leg and shrugged out of his jacket.

"Wake up, Sherlock," John said, in as comforting a voice as he could manage. He placed his coat over Sherlock's chest, hoping to keep him stable until the "cavalcroft" arrived.

Sherlock frowned, but he stopped shivering as badly. John tried encouraging him, "Open your eyes, please, Sherlock, please…"

Sherlock made incomprehensible noises that were primal and defensive. John tapped him lightly on the cheek. Sherlock's eyes fluttered like he was demon-possessed. His shoulders shrugged like he was trying to lift his arms off of the ground, but couldn't. John placed two icy fingers to the pulse in his neck again, to ensure that he wasn't getting over-stimulated.

Suddenly, Sherlock's eyes opened and he looked straight into John's eyes. "Oh god, Sherlock, I'm so glad you're awake," John said softly. He frowned when Sherlock's face turned to revulsion and shock. Without warning, John had armfuls of Sherlock trying to push him over, strangle him, and elbow him in the stomach. Of course, with Sherlock's weakened state, it was more like John trying to fight off a sheet on a laundry line.

"Sherlock, calm down!" John exclaimed. He didn't want to physically restrain his friend. There had obviously been enough of that recently. He just wanted to make sure that Sherlock didn't give himself a heart attack trying to kill him.

Men with flashlights were coming up behind them. John grasped one of Sherlock's flailing hands. "It's all right, Sherlock," he said. "You're going to make it."


	9. Chapter 9

Another lapse of time. One minute, it was Moriarty bearing down on him, glaring and threatening. Then he was on a warm, soft ground. The warmth was the main thing. It was incomparable to any other sensations. It was comfortable and peaceful. And he could hear noises and he could open his eyes to light.

"Sherlock?" said a familiar voice. "Are you awake?"

Sherlock turned his head to the right and saw John sitting beside him. John was wearing a pair of scrubs (read: extended time at the hospital without going home), and his eyes were red, with black circles above his cheeks (read: experiencing grief or compounding worry). Sherlock took a moment to look at the room around him. White, industrial bed sheets, metal protective bars framing the bed, IV drip, heart monitor, television hanging seven metres above the ground. On the left near the window, there were a few flower bouquets and baskets of treats which he rolled his eyes at the inanity of.

"Sherlock? Are you in there?" Now John was leaning over the bed.

He cleared his throat and attempted to enunciate a sentence without sounding like he'd been asleep for three days after going through the proverbial wringer. What came out was a cough and a squeaky, "Yes."

John sat back in his chair, visibly losing tension as he sagged down. "Thank god," he murmured. "We didn't know if you were going to find your way back out of there…your mind, I mean."

Sherlock nodded in agreement. He swallowed against the dryness in his throat and then gestured toward a cup of water on the side table, which John gave him. A few sips of cool, clean water and he tried speaking again. "How long have I been sleeping?"

"Four days," John answered.

Sherlock shifted in the bed a little and felt a sharp burning pain in his leg. He hissed and reached toward his bandage-covered calf.

"Be careful," John warned. "You've got a pretty bad burn there."

Sherlock stilled himself, content to be soothed by John's confident, strong voice. He nearly fell back asleep when he asked, "John, what happened? Why am I in the hospital?" It unnerved him to realize that he had no memory of any accidents or cases that may have landed him unconscious in a hospital bed for four days.

"You don't remember?" John asked. He blinked at Sherlock, concerned.

Sherlock slowly shook his head. Sweat trickled down his face and neck.

"That's really odd," John commented. "I'm going to talk to your doctor. I'll be right back." John got up to leave, but Sherlock grabbed him by the back of his shirt.

"Wait! John, what happened to me?" he asked.

John didn't appear to hear him. He tugged his shirt out of Sherlock's clenching fist, and Sherlock fell back.

Into the water. 


	10. Chapter 10

Mycroft had insisted that Sherlock stay in hospital for monitoring until his "condition improved." John wanted nothing more than to steal him away and tuck him into his own bed, far from the ward psychiatrist who wanted to push anti-psychotics into him. Mycroft had at least been permissible on the subject of all medical treatments first passing John's approval.

That's how they'd ended up with nothing but a fluid drip of antibiotics and nutrients, a heart monitor, and regularly changed bandages on Sherlock's leg. John himself performed checks for infection on the wound six times per day, avoiding at all costs the risk of fever and further delirium.

Sherlock was very rarely combative or hard to deal with. Most of the time, he honestly seemed to know what was going on, and could have normal conversations with John or with Mycroft or a passing nurse. However, just when it seemed that he had gained all mental faculties back, he would go stiff and his eyes would become unfocused. He never talked when he was like that, and he moved infrequently in a such a way that it seemed like he was being restrained by invisible ropes. John decided after the third time that this signaled Sherlock imagining himself to be back in the isolation tank and bound. At first John had offered comforting words and soft touches to Sherlock's arm, but that typically only agitated him further.

On the second night of Sherlock's incoherence, John tucked himself into the unoccupied bed nearby (_thanks Mycroft, I think_), setting an alarm for 3 am so he could check the bandages again.

/

John jolted upright in the bed. He was sure he'd heard something. He blinked at the digital clock on the side table. 1:49, it read. He glanced over at the rumpled and haphazard blankets on the other bed, hardly able to distinguish anything in the merciful darkness. He lay back down, convinced that Sherlock must have been talking in his sleep, or some nurse had been passing through.

/

This time the alarm woke him. 3:01 said the red numbers. John rolled out of bed and lay his upper body back on it for a few seconds, not quite looking forward to prodding and maneuvering a potentially non-compliant Sherlock. Finally, he stumbled over to the other bed and clicked the light switch button on the handrail.

"Holy shit," John said instantly. Sherlock was gone.

John immediately ran over to the small bathroom connected to the room. It was empty. He raced back to the bed to look for clues to Sherlock's mysterious disappearance. The IV had been none-too-gently ripped out, leaving little spots of blood on the white sheets. The pillow had fallen onto the floor and the heart monitor clip had been stretched across the bed, as if Sherlock had just gotten up and started sleepwalking without bothering to remove it first.

John went to the door, ready to burst into the hallway and knock off a few incompetent staff's heads, when he happened to glance back at the room. The window was leaning open.

"Oh my god," John said, his eyes growing wide with horror. Their room was on the 10th floor.

/

1:45 am

Someone had let him out of the isolation tank. It was marvelous. All his bonds were gone, except for some wiry bit that was clenched tightly around his arm. He was able to pull his hand free of that easily enough, although it did give a little pinch with the effort.

He planted his feet on the ground and moved through the darkness. The floor was cold and his legs were made of cotton or perhaps gelatin. He sauntered toward the silvery light that was flowing through a window.

_Where am I_? he wondered. Sherlock pushed the window open to gauge the outside temperature. That's when he saw a little sign in the courtyard that said HOSPITAL. _Well that won't do. I shouldn't be in the hospital. I am not sick, nor am I injured. _Sherlock enjoyed his conclusion and decided to leave.

/

3:05 am

John couldn't control his suddenly loud breathing. He slowly approached the window, the image of Sherlock's body lying cracked and broken ten stories down burning itself into his mind. _Dead. He would be dead. There would be no question about it. _John contemplated the noise which had woken him hours earlier. It had sounded like a thud, like a squeak and then a thud. _A squeak when he opened the window, and a thud when he hit the ground…_John forced his mind away from the notion. The noises had been muddled and assimilated into his subconscious. He'd been sleeping, for God's sake. There might have been no actual noise at all.

His stomach felt like it was plummeting down a steep hill. Every instinct he had about the situation was telling him that something had gone wrong.

John drew within three feet of the open window, and in the back of his mind, knew that if Sherlock was in fact lying on the ground below, that he would soon have company down there.

John forced himself to look and all the horrific images he'd been contemplating were suddenly materializing in front of his eyes.

"Oh god, oh god, oh god," John whispered to himself as he turned away from the sight. His mind filled in the blanks regarding the object he'd barely taken a glance at. Blue housecoat. Hospital issue white pants. Sherlock's crushed face. Arms crooked and twisted.

"Oh shit, oh god…shit shit shit," John cursed. A rush of heat fell over him. He suddenly felt as if he might topple over. Tears stung him and threatened to spill.

John looked back down at the body…and realized that it wasn't a body. Only a housecoat.

"WHAT THE _FUCK _SHERLOCK, ARE YOU TRYING TO KILL ME OR WHAT?" John shouted. He would have screamed more obscenities targeted at Sherlock's mother, his intelligence, and his psychopathic tendencies, but he remembered that he was in a recovery ward. As a guest.

A cool blast of sensibility descended on him and he leaned against the wall to embrace it. His heart still beat uncomfortably fast, but he was tampering down the frantic breathing he'd been doing.

The door swung open across the room and a green-looking nurse came in. "Sir? Is everything okay in here?"

John pushed away from the wall. "Actually, do you know what's happened to the patient from this room? He has gone missing."

The nurse frowned and started to look through half a dozen pages on her clipboard. "Ok…this is room ten-oh-two…so the patient that is supposed to be here…is…"

"Holmes," John offered, quite apparently annoyed. "Sherlock Holmes."

The nurse bit her lip anxiously. "Hmm…Holmes…Holmes, Holmes, Holmes…"

"Never mind," John roared. "I will find him myself." He hastened past the conflicted nurse and into the ward's hallway. He considered heading toward the nurse's station, but after his most recent experience with the hospital staff, he didn't have a desire for another such encounter.

Instead, he tried to imagine where Sherlock would have gone. Laboratory? Maybe. Kitchen? No. Definitely not. Dangerous, experimental surgical ward where he could accidentally walk in and fall face first onto a surgery table and have his spleen removed? Most likely. Back to Baker Street? Perhaps.

John sighed a longsuffering sigh of a man who's endured far more than his fair share of irritation and aggravation. Then he nearly trampled poor Mycroft like a stampeding wildebeest running over a polite antelope.

"Dr. Watson," said Mycroft in his charming, pretentious way. "What are you doing up at this hour?"

John eyed Mycroft with suspicion. "What are _you _doing here at this hour?" he countered. Did Mycroft know? Mycroft knew everything…so probably yes.

"Well, I was just trying to give my little brother a visit-"

"Seven hours before visitation period," John mentioned.

"-and I found that he is not in his room," Mycroft finished, unhampered but John's comment. "Where is he?"

John couldn't escape the Holmes stare down. "I lost him," he admitted.

Mycroft sighed and looked mildly put out. "Why does that not surprise me?" he murmured.

"Have you _ever _been surprised, Mycroft?" John said flatly.

"Only by my brother," Mycroft replied. "Let's see if we can't find him."

"Oh, good idea, because I was just about to go grab some cooking oil and turn the hallway into a slip and slide, but your plan makes a lot more sense," said John with a completely straight face.

Mycroft narrowed his eyes. "There was no call for you to be impolite."

/

Marill: This chapter made me feel in such a good mood! :D So, where is Holmes? Why is his housecoat on the ground outside? Will Mycroft and John be able to work together without inducing an aneurysm? MORE SOON! :D:D:D:D:D


	11. Chapter 11

"At around two am you were awakened by a noise…"

"I think."

"You didn't get up to investigate the cause?"

"I thought he was just making noise, as usual. Not exactly a sound sleeper, your brother. Talks and groans…and that's all the time, not just when he's in hospital…I should get a medal for all the sleepless nights I've had since moving in with him…"

Mycroft gave John a look which said "Are you serious? Did you think through what you just said?" He cleared his throat and said mildly, "Doctor, I think you are forgetting who was kept awake for two years by crying, two years by attempts to escape his room and then the house, three years of animals getting loose inside the bedrooms and bathrooms, one particularly memorable year in which everyone in the household found it difficult just to _breathe _let alone sleep because of some noxious concoction that had spilled into the air vents, and five horrifying years of Sherlock experiencing _boredom_ for the first time." Mycroft paused thoughtfully. "Although, in all fairness, I actually _did _receive a medal eventually."

John blinked and stared. "You and I will talk about all that someday…not now, because we have to find Sherlock."

"Oh, is that what you want to do?" Mycroft said inquisitively. "Find Sherlock? Oh, I suppose if we must, but I really was looking forward to rounding up the nurses for a game of keep away." He sighed dramatically.

"No one likes a smart arse, Mycroft," John said shortly.

Mycroft was able to put on a completely innocent face for a few moments before he faded back to his default pompousness. "Well, I think I actually will gather together a team of nurses to help search the hospital. I'll have my assistant go over the security cameras and I will go and find a decent cup of coffee."

"Perhaps the coffee can tell us Sherlock's location," John muttered under his breath, leaving in the opposite direction that Mycroft had gone.

/

Darkness. Warmth. Peace.

_Shit._

Sherlock blinked up into the nothingness above him. _Is this real? _he wondered cautiously. _Where am I? _It didn't seem the same as the tank. It was dry, and something was pressing uncomfortably into his back.

But it was easy to forget those details and imagine himself floating in stasis forever. No bonds this time. Always interesting when things were changed up.

_No, _he warned himself. _You're not in the isolation tank now. I can get up…I can get up, but I just don't want to…I'll try to get up. _After his tiny conference with himself, Sherlock shifted slightly and tried to pool all of his strength into the act of standing. Or sitting at the very least. He moved one of his long legs toward crouching and slammed it into a solid wall not 100 centimetres away. 

He gasped. Something wrong. Leg is very definitely hurt. It burned and it throbbed and something was tingling and making it itch.

Sherlock went back into the darkness. 

/

John called Mrs. Hudson to tell her to be on the lookout for Sherlock returning home. Then, he headed down into the morgue. He checked in all of Sherlock's usual haunts-in the forensics lab, in the mortuary, around the showering rooms, in the titration lab.

He then went upstairs into the cafeteria, just to see if Sherlock was there harassing Molly for some reason or another. He soon realized that Molly was probably not at the hospital at all, since it was closing in on four in the morning.

"I need to sleep," John muttered to himself.

He did a brief scan of the psychiatric ward to ensure that Sherlock hadn't accidentally wandered in and been kept.

Before he could conceive of a different place to look, he received a buzz on his mobile.

_6__th__ Floor. North Wing. Assistance please. MH._

"Oh god," John said with a sigh.

/

He found Mycroft and a gaggle of nurses a few minutes later, crowding around a linen closet.

"What's going on here?" John asked, sidling up to Mycroft.

Mycroft gave him a fatigued look. "He's in there with the extra bedding. He doesn't want to come out."

John glanced at the door. "All right, ladies," he said to the nurses, "we'll take it from here. Please disperse."

Chattering away about the strange man who'd been hiding in the linen closet, the nurses scattered away.

John opened the door and saw the most ridiculous thing he could imagine. Sherlock was sprawled out in the closet, half-covered in bed sheets wearing almost no clothes and humming.

"Sherlock…?" John wondered. His eye immediately went to the bandaging around Sherlock's calf, which was bleeding again. "What are you doing in there, mate?"

Sherlock appeared to suddenly notice John's presence. "John?" he croaked. John nodded. "John, I can't tell if this is actually happening, or if it's another hallucination."

"Well, as far as I know it's real," John offered.

"Yes, but you've said that before," Sherlock argued. "There are several reasons I have for thinking that this isn't real. First, I'm in a closet. That…just seems odd. Second, Mycroft is here and it's the middle of the night. That isn't normal. Third, I can't stand up."

"That's because you've been walking around on a bum leg," John said.

"Fourth, I'm not wearing any clothes again…so I think I'll just stay here if you don't mind," Sherlock finished.

"Okay, well you walked yourself into the closet, don't ask me why," John said. "Mycroft is here probably because he wants to control the situation and bother _me. _We talked about why you can't stand up, and you aren't wearing any clothes because you apparently threw them out the window. You nearly gave me a heart attack with that, by the way."

"I threw my clothes…" Sherlock contemplated that for a moment as John saw gears turning in his addled mind. "Oh! I remember! I thought it was strange to wake up in a hospital because I didn't feel ill. I threw the dressing gown and scrub pants out the window because I thought that I'd be able to put my own clothes on. Only, they were missing. So, I went looking for another robe…and I guess I just fell asleep in here." Sherlock lifted his back off of the object that was poking uncomfortably into his spine. "What is a stiletto heel doing in here…oh god. Please get me out of here. I don't want to know what else is in this closet."

John and Mycroft helped Sherlock to his feet. Mycroft discreetly peeled a condom wrapper off of Sherlock's shoulder.

"Well, let's take you back to your hospital bed, little brother," Mycroft suggested.

"Ohhhh, no," John and Sherlock said in unison. "Back to Baker Street," John said.

"My thoughts exactly," Sherlock agreed. "I think I will feel much better as soon as I can be outside in the daylight again."

"Well, at least let me offer you a ride," Mycroft conceded.

/

Sherlock startled awake. He was lying on his back, up to his chin in lukewarm water. "Oh god, oh not again," he groaned.

He made a tremendous splash with his good leg, frustrated by his own mind.

"Sherlock?" A chink sound marked the lightswitch being flipped. Sherlock found himself in his bathtub. "What is going on in here?" John asked, stepping into the room.

Sherlock blinked in confusion. "I…thought I had hallucinated something again. I woke up…I thought I was in the tank…"

"Why were you taking a bath in the dark?" John demanded.

Sherlock blushed. "I had candles before! They must have burned out!"

"Ok, but why not take a shower?" John countered.

"I wanted bubbles," Sherlock grumbled.

"You know that isn't good for your leg," John advised. "You're meant to keep it dry."

"I want to get out. Help me out," Sherlock complained.

"You sound just like a three year old," John commented. He then had to duck as a shampoo bottle whizzed by his head.

/

Marill: That's the end! Ok. For those of you still confused, all the parts in John's POV are real, that last Sherlock POV was real. He's going to take a while recovering from this after all, and I simply don't have it in me to write a six month recovery story. But, technically speaking, everything is resolved. Sherlock is out of danger, he's back with John, he's on the mend, and he can take baths all by himself. :3 *is hit in the face with a soapy sponge* Don't make me come in there!

Sherlock: *squeak!*

Marill: Don't ask why Sherlock is at my house…ok, fenm promised that I could have a hot consulting detective on top of me once I finished this story. So…when he got here, neither of us were in the mood, so he just had a bath and I had some spaghetti. DON'T JUDGE ME!

I must be getting loopy from the antioxidant tea or something… 


End file.
